Smoke from Russian fires across Northeast China

Fires burning across southern Russia are choking the skies with thick smoke in this Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image from the Aqua satellite on May 9, 2003. Large numbers of fires (detected by MODIS and marked with red dots) are burning in the terrain around Lake Baikal (top left). They are spreading plumes of smoke southward hundreds of miles over China and the Korean Peninsula. At bottom left, some of the haze may be from air pollution.